Archive for the ‘General’ Category

The story below comes from our India Office where hard working people are emigrating…

We think it is a story that rings true the world over…

An Old Story

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

Indian Version

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant’s house.

Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter.

Mayawati states this as `injustice’ done on Minorities.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance).

Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for ‘ Bengal Bandh’ in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.

CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the ‘Grasshopper Rath’.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ‘ Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act’ [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes ‘Special Reservation ‘ for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions & in Government Services.

The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, it’s home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it ‘ A Triumph of Justice’.

Lalu calls it ‘Socialistic Justice ‘.

CPM calls it the ‘ Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden ‘

Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.

Many years later…..

The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley,

100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India
AND
As a result of loosing lot of hard working Ants and feeding the grasshoppers,

India is still a developing country and will remain forever !!!!

I have worked in Immigration now for nearly 20 years.  I want to ask our readers to leave their comments on the following question.

Will people want to Emigrate in greater numbers now before the world goes into deep recession or would they prefer to see it through and not leave home in times of trouble?

and

What do you believe will be the main reasons to justify their decision? 

I am certain there is no right answer to this question but I would love to hear your views.  In the last down turn in the early 90’s emigration rose sharply as people looked for a better standard of life.  Will history repeat itself?

Thanks for taking the time to add your thoughts :) 

With the property industry in Spain facing a downturn, one British expat has come up with a novel way to off-load his property just outside Benidorm and start a new life in Florida.

Wayne Connell, owner of an eight-bedroom villa, a wild west theme park and a Harley Davidson, that he values at £5 million, is selling raffle tickets at £25 a pop - the winning ticket takes the lot.

“All the winner will need is a price of a ticket and airfare to get here,” Connell said.

A maximum of 200,000 tickets will be sold he says. If he sells less than 175,000 tickets the winner will receive the cash, he says.

Developers have offered to buy the land, but he wouldn’t get “full value” and he doesn’t want to see the business he built over 10 years “reduced to rubble,” he says

“In the current market, there are not many people buying,” Connell says, “but there are still developers buying up land and sitting on it.”

Would you give over £25 for a chance to win the lot?

Have you heard of other people attempting novel ways of international emigration?

He’s sold about 10,000 so far and intends to hold the draw in April…

Elsewhere in Spain…

A British expat has become the ‘accidental mayor’ of a Spanish town on the Costa Blanca because his predecessors have been arrested in an alleged property development scandal.

The deputy mayor is allegedly caught accepting a 5,000 euro (£3900) bribe stating, ‘It’s better in large denomination bills. They occupy less space,’ in a video released by Spanish media outlets.

All sounds very News of the World.

Yesterday the streets of London saw 350 athletes on 12 floats parade from the Mansion House to Trafalgar Square carrying a grand total of 102 metals - as we all know they finished fourth in the rankings - our best performance since 1908. Well done guys!

This got me wondering where all the faces originated from.

They’re a mixed bag of elite professionals from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales but how many are first, second or third generation immigrants and are any emigrants?

Christine Ohuruogu stormed home to take Gold in the 400m - she was born to Nigerian parents in Newham, East London, Tyrone Edgar, a Men’s 100m quarter finalist was born in Greenwich and has since went to junior college in Kansas in the USA and continues to work there. Mo Farah was named male athlete of the year 2006 by the British Athletics Writers’ Association, he was born in Somalia and Jeanette Kwakye, 100m, 4 x 100m Relay is of Ghanaian origin!

I wonder how many others represent not just Team GB, but Australia (6th), USA (2nd), Australia (6th) - did I mention Team GB came 4th (well done guys!), where they came from and where they now live/ work?

With the new points-based Managed Migration System replacing current methods by which athletes can enter this country how will sport be affected and how will it adapt?

If I were an athlete I wouldn’t want to be loosing sleep over it, I’d want to be getting on with my training and have someone else take care of the bureaucracy!

Loosely based on the United States ‘green card’, the single EU work visa is to be known as a ‘Blue Card’ after the colour of the flag, offering permanent residency anywhere in Europe after five years’ work.

The European Commission President announced plans to target qualified immigrants who will be able to bring their families after a 90-day application period. This is to meet an estimated short-fall of 20 million skilled and non-skilled workers by 2030.

Ministers said that Britain was likely to opt out of the scheme but would not be able to block most of the other 26 EU nations from agreeing to the scheme at their next summit in November. It will be decided by qualified majority voting with the Irish Republic and Austria other possible objectors.

The idea of a visa giving full employment and social security rights to migrants has long been a dream of the European Commission to meet projected shortages of engineers, doctors and IT specialists as Europe’s population ages.

Officials in Brussels believe that the Blue Card will change the image of Europe as a destination mainly for unskilled immigrants. About 85 per cent of global unskilled migrant labour heads to the EU while only 5 per cent goes to the United States, the commission argued. In contrast 55 per cent of skilled labour goes to the US and just 5 per cent to the EU.

Applicants for a card will need a job offer for at least a one-year contract and the employer will have to certify that the post cannot be filled from within the EU. The work contract will also have to offer the applicant a salary at least three times the level of the national minimum wage in the country where the job is located.

In return, migrants will enjoy an equal level of social and employment rights to EU citizens, including pensions, housing and healthcare. They will also be allowed to move to any other EU country if they find a new job there after two years of residence in the sponsoring country.

The UK Government is preparing its own system where applicants from outside the EU will only qualify to work in Britain if they earn enough points under criteria such as qualifications, age and experience.

The Blue Card will also mean increased mobility for high-skilled immigrants and their families inside the EU.

The world is becoming more and more mobile with people coming and going globally on a daily basis, and the United Kingdom is no exception.

As people flock to the UK seeking better job opportunities and higher earning power, so to are people flooding out of Britain for similar reasons.

The numbers of Brits leaving the UK has reached record levels reveal recent statistics. In the past year up until June, 406 000 residents have left Britain to live and work abroad. Over 200 000 of these were UK citizens, this is an increase from 196 000 the year before, reports www.dailymail.co.uk.

Of those who have left the UK, Australia has benefited the most with as many as 1.3 million British born citizens living Down Under. About 761 000 live in Spain and 67800 in the USA.

The amount of people leaving is far less than those coming in, in the same period 600 000 newcomers settling in the UK, many of these are returning Britons.

Global mobility has therefore become a commonality in today’s society and with figures like this it looks set to continue.

All those looking to apply for visas for the United Arab Emirates(UAE) will be able to apply online by January next year.

This is yet another country to join the ever-growing number of countries turning to technology to make the visa application process quick and less effort.

The UAE Ministry of Interior announced on Monday the new online visa system that will be accessed via the website www.moieserv.ae.

Currently the application form, together with the required documents, need to be handed in at the nearest Naturalisation and Residency Department. This will no longer have to be done with the online system.

This system will also allow fees and charges to be paid online via a credit card.

With global mobility becoming a developing trend it seems that it has fuelled an entire generation of so-called job-hoppers.

According to a report by CNN fewer numbers of youngsters are opting to settle with one employee and are instead moving around from job to job.

The report blames today’s mobile work force as the result of a rapidly changing economy.”In previous generations, a worker sometimes could land a job out of college and remain with the same company until retirement. Experts say that scenario is rare these days; most workers don’t spend more than 10 years with a company.”

The increased mobility comes as workers have had to adapt to a global, information-age economy. In this age companies as well as employees are not merely settling for local talent and are instead broadening their horizons to the global marketplace.

With many students opting to travel and work most end up in temporary jobs which are not skills assessed but are instead used as a convince pit stop before returning to follow careers.

Well, this is the theory in practice, however it could be argued that with so many people wanting to open their horizons and experience more of the worlds and its contrasting cultures the tradition of establishing a career at a single company and subsequently growing through the ranks.

Here! Here! To our Equality Minister Harriet Harman. Today the minister established the much needed Equality Bill to end discrimination in the work place. Personally I am over the moon about this, I think it’s the feminist in me coming out and I know the old boys club who set up these ridiculers rules to discriminate against age, race, sex or sexual preferences are all rolling about to try to revoke the new proposed bill. This bill will make it easier for women to demand equal pay and as it has been the trend in the past years, age discrimination will come to an end, eventually.

Thank goodness www.globalvisas.com is a company that prides itself in equality and diversity. The equal pay legislation was introduced 30 years ago however the gap is still mounting. Everywhere else in the world the anti-discrimination bills are in place but they are not “really” implemented. So what the minister is saying is that, all that has to stop and government and business need to work together to eliminate that gap and play fair and square on the playground. So how does this bill fit into immigration policies?

More diverse skilled migrants can come into the country knowing that they will be treated fairly and equally. As women, the uncomfortable feeling of negotiating what we are worth will take a plunge. More women will start tracking the world for better opportunities to the UK. Recent studies has shown that women in the IT industry for example which happens to be one of the fastest growing industries in the world (next to banking and business to name a few), women are being paid much less. Women may feel that getting a university degree is useless as they will continue to earn less than their male counterparts. This will all hopefully change.

Of course many of us know that the UK has always sold itself to the rest of the world as the mother of the global community and that it has opened its doors to multiculturalism and diversity. Even with recent UK border and immigration law changes the UK can still hold its head high as one of the best in the world.

Even in the US, Democrat presidential candidate Obama Barrack has been trying to lure female voters by promising better earnings and pay raises. While in Spain the Spanish cabinet boasts itself with nine women alongside eight men, including Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Could this be why many English natives prefer Spain as an alternative immigration destination? Whatever the reason, this law proposal is slowly restoring my hope in humanity. I think the world with the help of the UK is initiating a much needed movement 0f anti-discrimination on anything.

Now we only hope that they can walk the walk as much as they are talking it. (TM)

Recently I read an article by Toronto journalist and author, Joe Clark called The Web is like Canada. The article touches on the paradigm and similarities that the web and Canada have to each other. Mr. Clark states: “like the web Canada defines itself by what it is not”.

“Only Canadians could assert themselves by explaining what they aren’t. Even the West and East Germans; the North and South Koreans; the New Zealanders and the Australians; the Scottish, the Welsh, the Irish, the Northern Irish, and the British; or the Walloons and the Flemish – all identifiable in relation to someone else – don’t take definition by negation to such lengths”. 

I thought how right Clark is. We hear very little of Canada and when we do hear about them they are either “requesting” (I use the word request and not need for good reasons) for skilled immigrants, or on its picturesque perfection and maybe sometimes if we are lucky we may hear a bit on sporting events.

But generally we hear very little of this diverse country and its inhabitants and yet many desire to move to there. Canada has become almost like a myth, it exist only when you want to get to it but it somehow manages to remain in hibernation until its needed to come out to make some announcement to the world or defend itself from Americans.  

Let’s take a look at what is happening in the world at the moment, politically (US presidential candidates elections), socially (earthquakes in China and famine in Ethiopia) and economically (mortgage crashes and economic downfalls of the super-powers (America and UK)). Why have we not heard anything from the world’s biggest immigration country? Could Canada be so perfect as to not get affected by the rest of foreign policies and market crashes?  Is it so invincible? 

Every year millions of UK immigrants flock to this country for a better lifestyle. Canada is truly Zion. Is this the reason we should all move to Canada because its so kept itself away from all the chaos of the world?  

This wonderland seems unattainable yet it is. Even though Canada and its inhabitants live in a bubble, we do know Canada has opened its borders to the world, housing refugees or opening up for students and workers. Clark states that Canada is struggling to find its own identity yet Canada has a solid reputation internationally making it the Hallmark of the world.  I couldn’t agree. 

Maybe I’ll ask the boss to move me to our  www.globalvisas.ca offices! (TM)